1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to electronic calculating systems and more particularly to an electronic order pricing system for receiving customer order information by way of a data card and for calculating the price of the order.
2. Description of the Prior Art
In many retail establishments, such as stores, restaurants, etc., a customer's order is manually entered on a sales check or bill by a clerk or waitress and when the order has been filled, and before the bill is presented to the customer, the customer's order will be priced with the unit price for each item ordered being multiplied by the total number of each item ordered and the total price for each order will be determined by adding the individual price totals for each of the items ordered.
The process may frequently require look-up of item prices and manual calculation to obtain the total bill. Thus, manual customer billing is slow and tedious process and is, of course, subject to human error. Such error in the pricing and addition of sales checks can result in customers being under-charged in which case profits are diminished. If, on the other hand, a customer is over-charged the customer will tend to look with disfavor on the particular establishment. If such pricing errors are frequent, the retail establishment will have low profit margins and will be likely to lose a number of customers.
In other retail establishments, each item price is individually entered into a case register, item by item, by a clerk or waitress, and a sub-total is automatically computed by the register. Such procedures while more accurate, are still subject to human error if, for example, a clerk selects the wrong price for an item or makes a mistake in keying the price of an item into the register. In addition, the customer cannot, at a glance, correlate prices on his bill with items he has ordered, and in scanning a register receipt which usually comprises a long column of figures which represent his order, it is difficult for the customer to determine if he was charged properly. Moreover, the register is tied up while each item price is entered into the register and if a customer changes his order, the register cannot be used for pricing other orders while the first order is modified.